JD Manley will take his first step on campus as an upperclassman this August, but he’s already further along with his college search than most incoming seniors. Manley traveled to Greensboro, N.C., in late June for a national soccer tournament with nearly 300 college scouts in attendance.

Manley will be a junior at Fountain Hills High School this year and he plays for the Phoenix Rising FC Youth Soccer U16 Elite Club National League (ECNL) team. He’s been a starting center back on the team for two years and he played for the Minnesota Thunder Academy ECNL team before that.

Manley’s team did well and won its conference this past season. The conference included teams from Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, and the top two teams in each conference advance to the national tournament.

The ECNL is one of the highest levels of club play in the country, and it’s only existed since 2009. The Scottsdale Blackhawks joined ECNL in 2017, and then they merged with Scottsdale Soccer to form Phoenix Rising FC Youth Soccer in 2018.

Arizona currently has three ECNL teams, Phoenix Rising, FC Tucson and Arizona Arsenal. Manley played on the only ECNL team in Minnesota, and larger states like California have more than 10 ECNL teams.

Manley’s team was the first Phoenix Rising team to make it to Nationals. They practiced for weeks after the regular season ended, meeting for 7 a.m. practices at least three times a week. They ran miles and miles to train their bodies to deal with the summer heat and humidity of the southeast.

The national tournament welcomed 64 teams and Manley said he’d never played in such a big tournament before. He knew he’d be in for some challenging competition, and he was excited for the opportunity to play against them.

“We can't get film of other teams playing, it's all in-club,” Manley said. “I can't get film of, say, a California team's game. It's just you got to be ready for everything.”

“A major thing my coach has said, and he’s been doing this at practice, he’s been going super hard straight at the beginning of practice, because that’s what it’s going to be like,” Manley continued. “It’s going to come down to the first five minutes…You’ve got to have your mind ready the first second you step on the field.”

Manley said his team was ranked No. 48, and Phoenix Rising had to play No. 7 Dallas FC early in the tournament. Manley and his team did not advance out of pool play, but Manley started all three games and played in front of scouts from Davidson, Wake Forest, Washington and many more.

There were multiple games happening at the same time, and the U17 teams received more attention from college scouts than the U16 teams. Manley emailed several coaches before the tournament, and then he sent follow-up emails to the coaches that watched him afterward.

Manley and his family know what it takes to play college sports, because they’ve done it for three generations. Manley’s grandfather, uncle and father all played college basketball, and both his older brothers made it to the collegiate level in other sports.

Max Manley ran track and cross country and graduated from Miami University of Ohio this year, and Bennett Manley is currently a pitcher for Colorado Christian University’s baseball team. Their mother even played a year of college basketball too.

“I see all the places they’re going, all their teammates. It’s super nice,” Manley said. “I just want something like that in college. They set a good example for me for sure.”

His father, Paul Manley, said he didn’t care what activity Manley did, but he had to do something. Growing up in Minnesota, Manley took up ice hockey first. He also played tennis and basketball before he fell in love with soccer.

“He loved to be outside, and soccer was it,” Paul Manley said. “We have no soccer anywhere else in our family. [He] paved [his] own way. It’s all him, not following [his] brothers, not following anybody else.”

Manley said his goal with soccer is to earn a college scholarship, and he wants to play at the highest level he can. He’s gone to soccer ID camps to get noticed, and he plans to attend several more in the next two years. Only 56% of Division I universities have a men’s soccer team, so Manley needs to be proactive to reach that level.

Manley’s not ruling out any possibilities with his future in soccer. He’s qualified for Arizona’s Olympic Development team two years in a row, and that’s allowed him to meet and play with even more of the best soccer talent in the country.

Unlike ECNL, the U.S. Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program (ODP) does not have long seasons and there’s only one ODP team per state. Manley said the team has five practices before they play against other ODP teams in a regional tournament.

Olympic and college scouts hand pick the best players from the ODP tournaments, and those players advance to more tournaments. Eventually, the best players are picked to be on the US Youth National Team.

Manley’s passion allows him to play soccer nearly year-round, and he’s committed to putting in the work over the next two years to reach a college scholarship. He doesn’t have much time to rest at all, because Phoenix Rising will hold try outs and start their next season in August.